As I’m writing this, I’m recovering from a horrific cold, so you get to deal with me bashing out a column on my favorite mangaka instead of anything that requires effort to research.  And on that note, here we go with:  What is Minekura Kazuya Doing Right?

Minekura is the mangaka for Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload, as well as the recently released Bus Gamer and the to-be-released Wild Adapter.  She started as a doujinshika, self-publishing the first version of Saiyuki with her circle, Studio Backgammon, before her professional debut.  In her storytelling, she builds in layers of character, story, and imagery in such a way that it rewards careful, close reading.  I’m going to focus on Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload here, since they’re easier for readers to get their hands on.

In these series, Minekura takes an old story and remixes it.  Journey to the West, the original story, is one of the Four Classical Chinese Novels and is a fictionalized version of the introduction of the Buddhist faith to China from India.  Journey is well-known in Japan, and is the subject of many interpretations, including Dragonball Z. Minekura doesn’t feel the need to stick with the traditional portrayals of the characters, mixing and matching personality traits to fit the needs of the story she wants to tell about the characters and their relationships. The journey West is an excuse to focus on the characters instead of being the focus itself.

The world of Saiyuki is thrown together as she needs it to be and doesn’t stand up to close examination:  what effect is thousands of berserk youkai having on the economy, anyway? And how is Sanzo using a credit card when the story is explicitly set in ancient China, and there are no phone lines in evidence anyway?  These anachronisms don’t collapse the reader’s belief in the world because Minekura remains consistent in the imagery, character, and emotional relationships, rather than the plot or the worldbuilding.  If an element such as a gun doesn’t fit into ancient China, but fits on a thematic level with the characters – using a long-distance weapon Sanzo remains physically and emotionally distant from his opponents, and the gun is small enough to carry around and powerful enough to kill himself with, he says – then it goes into the manga.

Artwise, Minekura has developed a distinct style, with bishounen built like toast racks on heroin, a rough dynamic line, and expressive use of darks and lights.  There is no way you can mistake her style for someone else’s, because it is more detailed and less simplistic than many other manga.  Her paneling is straightforward, with few of the usual shoujo tricks of breaking panel borders or substituting tone patterns for backgrounds, even when she’s focusing closely on the emotional lives of the characters.  She is also not afraid to change her style in the same series – compare Book 1 of Saiyuki with book 5 of Saiyuki Reload and they’re worlds apart.

Minekura uses structural techniques in the story to illustrate themes: Ukoku is associated with crows and ravens, and they show up in most of his panels.  He’s even drawn in one panel so that his sleeves fly out like a crow’s.  Other imagery associated with characters is the sun with Sanzo, the moon and the color orange with Koumyo, and water for the relationship between the two.  

She also focuses on themes by mirroring panels in different scenes when she wants to draw a parallel between the events depicted.  In volume 7 of Saiyuki, Sanzo goes over a cliff and is rescued by Gojyo, in a scene similar to one in flashback in volume 8 where Gojyo is rescued from a cliff by his brother Jien.  Rereading the scene in volume 7 after seeing the flashback in 8 adds another layer of meaning, because Gojyo is developing new relationships in his life which mirror his old relationships in some ways and not in others, which is the important point of the scene and makes his character more rounded.  The mirroring is more than just falling over the cliff – Minekura echoes character positions and dialogue, too

As befitting a story focused on the characters, Minekura makes the speech patterns of each one different.  You can tell just by reading the speech balloon whether the speaker is Hakkai, Sanzo, Gojyo, or Goku because of the dialect, the rhythm of the words, and the words choice (and the translators are doing a great job of reflecting that).

The pacing of the story allows the characters to develop as the plot goes forward.  The first chapters are a bit rough, as Minekura starts feeling her way around the story and works out which direction she wants to go, but by book 4 it’s on a roll.  She alternates periods of action with inaction, which allows the characters to stop and reflect on their experiences.  These quiet periods allow the reader to pause as well.  She also fits in moments of comedy, such as the scene with Sanzo brushing his teeth on page 30 of Reload 5. This breaks the tension of the previous chapter, and develops Sanzo’s character a bit as we learn that he is not a morning person.  She throws comic moments against highly tense ones to great effect in other places, including the last page of Reload 5, which pictures, in separate panels, two characters we haven’t seen for a while: one an ominous villain, and one a bumbling idiot.

This just scratches the surface of Minekura’s storytelling techniques.  I’ve collected links to a lot of essays on elements of Saiyuki at this link, if you’re interested and want to read more. Anyone who wants to be a professional mangaka needs to read lots of manga and analyze how the writers and creators achieved the effects they did, and Saiyuki is a great place to start. 

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